Butterflies
by Is0lde
Summary: When faced with the choice, will Tyler be permitted to rule once again... or are there things more important than destroying world economy and corporate art?


**Butterflies **

-

**Author's note:** I guess this is one of those "Tyler returns" sort of deals. I have to admit, I think I just kind of went with the flow on this one. _Just let the chips fall where they may_. Heh heh. So… don't blame me. Blame my mind. It has a very distinct will of its own.  
Oh, and everything belongs to Chuck the Magnificent, blah blah blah, copyright, all of that stuff.

-

Tranquilizers. Painkillers. Vast amounts of alcohol. Temporary comatose state. Wake up on the floor. Puke in a bucket. Then from the top again: tranquilizers, painkillers, alcohol…

This had been my way of life, my way of handling things for such a long time now, that I knew no other course of action. It was a destructive pattern, but then again, that had never stopped me before.

It was _comfortable_. Going into a haze the minute you wake up takes care of lots of problems.

"_No, I can't do the dishes."_

"_No, I can't sweep the floors."_

And every excuse was true. When in my most intoxicated state, I couldn't tell a broom from a sky-high pine, a mop from a badly manufactured wig.

It was also a great way of avoiding uncomfortable memories and thoughts. Half a jar of painkillers and a bottle of vodka? Shit, I was a fucking rock-star. I was an elevator going up the Empire State. I was a Neanderthal caveman, sitting by the fireplace, oblivious of everything but the primal instincts telling me to eat, sleep and fuck. I was no longer the person formerly known as… _Tyler Durden_.

Tyler hadn't shown his face since the credit-card company raid. Marla, though highly skeptical still to me and my previous schizophrenic self, had agreed to letting me stay at her place. And the only condition had been for me to "ask the bald brain-washed idiots to go fuck themselves", as she so elegantly had expressed herself. I'd let Project Mayhem go, but Fight Club still existed. I'd still see members I used to know personally with new black eyes, bruises and cuts when I once in a while ventured out the door to buy liquor. These days, I kept a pretty low profile.

But I hadn't gone to Richard to beg for my job back, and not just because I realized that such an attempt would be utterly useless; I'd proven myself too insane to even dream of it. I didn't want to be part of the system I'd waged war on for so long. I knew if the hard-working employees of Microsoft, Sears, Samsung, wherever knew that I was lying around on a couch in suburbia doing absolutely nothing, they would argue I was a useless son of a bitch and a burden, a dickless parasite. That I was leeching off of society.

But I really didn't give a fuck.

Was it anybody else's business if I didn't become part of the consumption-based society which had spawned me, hell, all of us?

It was Thursday. The sofa was my soft and moldy refuge, and the beer in my hand was lukewarm. I didn't bother putting it in the freezer. Marla was out somewhere doing God-knew-what with God-knew-who and outside the apartment's tarnished door, a dog was barking as if it was doomsday. I would've embraced it. But it wasn't.

I closed my eyes. _This is my life, ending one minute at a time._

I had no reason to keep breathing. And strangely enough, that was a comforting sensation.

I flipped through the channels, looking for something even remotely interesting to direct my attention to. But nothing caught my eye anymore. Some supernaturally beautiful, supernaturally thin girl was telling consumers to buy the new Atkins diet handbook. She was the Venus de Milo with arms and legs added. The man appearing at her side was slim and muscular. His cheekbones were like perfectly shaped cliffs supporting the stormy contact lens blue seas that were his eyes above them. _Is that what a man looks like?  
_I leaned over the edge of the sofa and vomited.

"I see you're still wallowing in self-pity. Fuck, man, it's like you remember nothing of what I've taught you."

A familiar voice, coming from the entrance, disrupted my melancholic desert. I rolled over to look in the right direction. Somehow my eyes flung open, I don't know how. Five seconds earlier it had felt impossible.

Hawaiian shirt. Unkempt hair. A sarcastic grin on his lips. He was leaning in the doorway, chuckling at my misery. Just like Tyler to find _this_ amusing.

"What?" I breathed.

"You haven't changed your clothes in a week. You haven't bothered shaving – scruffiness becomes you, by the way. And you live almost solely on painkillers and alcohol. I applaud you, man. You're closer to hitting bottom _now_ than you were when you resided on Paper Street – now _that's_ an accomplishment. You're about one step away from ending your completely useless existence… have I missed something?"

"Marla." A sickening feeling invaded my body. The air escaped me. I could do nothing but answer him.

"Oh, right. Marla. Somehow I think she's beginning to get fed up with supporting you. I mean, the danger's all gone now. You're back to your old self, the one she despised, only you're even more pathetic now than you were before, which I by the way didn't think was possible at all. And while you're lying on the couch, she's out trying to make things work. Meals on wheels. Selling clothes. Next she'll be selling _herself_, which might just be a good idea. That way she'll earn more money for you to snag and buy various pills and bottles with."

"What do you want?"

"I want you," he pointed at me like a younger, more handsome and unconventional version of Uncle Sam, "to stop acting like you're the victim. I want you to return to your former ideals… the ones you've so clearly forsaken." And he shot a sarcastic glance at the television set, which was now advertising the Britney Spears in concert DVD. "And I want you to act upon them."

My head was aching like it was being beaten into a bloody gore by a mean motherfucker carrying a baseball bat.

"Fuck… off." My lips, dry as paper, formed the words. My voice was reduced to a pathetic whisper. "Fuck off."

Tyler laughed. "That's very creative of you, Ikeaboy. Well, let me just ask you this: what have you done since you tried to get rid of me that was constructive?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" My throat was sore, causing my voice to sound like an old shop-worn record.

"Just seems to me like you've abandoned the one thing that made your life worth living."

"And what's that?"

A Cheshire cat grin. "Making the world a better place."

I closed my eyes obstinately. Like a kid who runs off crying to mommy when things get bad and playing isn't fun anymore. Then, I opened them again. Still the same rebel in the doorway. Still the same mocking grin on his face. What the hell had I expected? "You," I said, pronouncing every syllable clearly, "are not real. You're a figment of my imagination. You're a fucking mirage, Tyler."

Tyler lit a cigarette that appeared in his hand out of thin air. He inhaled the smoke and blew it out through his nostrils without even blinking. Like a dragon. A fire-breathing, all-consuming serpent. "Then there must be some reason you've chosen to trick yourself into seeing me." He raised his hands, gesturing wildly in the air, the cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, smoke still issuing from it. He ran his fingers through his hair. "'Cause I'm obviously as real to you… as these sully fucking walls." He gave the wall on his right a blow with his fist. I could remember what that fist felt like, smacking my face, gashing old wounds open.

_I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, and most importantly… I am free in all the ways that you are not._ Words I'd almost forgotten… almost repressed. They were surfacing again, becoming more and more real as minutes went by.

Was he right? Had I better just conform to my old self and let go of everything I thought I'd figured out since I'd become Tyler-free? And what was that, exactly?_ What had I done since I tried to get rid of him that was constructive?_

I could just feel my contours becoming blurred again. My silhouette floating off to some distant space where I mingled with Tyler and we became one. Was this what I'd been lying around on the sofa waiting for? Was this my destiny, or was there another way for me? Did I really have a choice?

"You're getting it now." His grin grew wider as he put out his cigarette on the wall. It left a mark. "This –" he gesture implied the entire apartment, "– has been just another phase. A minor setback. You almost fell down the rabbit-hole again, my friend, but you realized that rabbit just wasn't worth following. He doesn't have the answers." Tyler played with the lighter. "I do." He advanced through the room and sat himself down on the couch right beside me. I looked at him closely. I could see small scars that made their way across his skin like small rivers. I'd given him several of them. It felt almost nostalgic.

"Did you really think that you would be able to readapt yourself? After seeing the light?" He shook his head regretfully. "I enlightened you. I _enriched_ you. Life without me… well, you tried it, didn't you? It didn't work. Right, back to where we started. _You are standing at the entrance of your cave._ But now, there's a fork in the road. Either you choose the path to your salvation, or…" He paused.

"Or what?"

He shrugged. "Or you could always buy that new designer dinner-plate set." He indicated the television, which was still spitting out advertisement. "So… what's it gonna be?"

I stared at him.  
I didn't see how I really had a choice.

Suddenly, a noise disturbed the placidness of the room. Keys penetrating the lock, twisting inside. Someone pulled the handle down and opened the door. I turned my head around.

Marla, coming back from another one of her little rounds about town. She was wearing that old bridesmaid's dress of hers, but to me, she might as well have been wearing a garbage-bag; she still looked decadently fabulous. She closed the door behind her and gazed at me suspiciously.

"Who were you talking to?"

I turned and stared at the now empty space beside me. "No one."

"I heard you," she said incredulously. "I heard you talking to someone."

I shrugged. "Must've been the TV."

She still looked unconvinced. "Yeah," she sighed. "Must've been." She took off her coat and put it on the bed. Her hair was all disheveled and looked dirty. She sat down beside me, right where Tyler had been sitting a few moments ago. I chanced to caress her cheek lightly. She just looked at me.

"You seem better," she said and shot a glance at the empty, once liquor-filled bottles on the floor. "Just the two bottles today." There was no trace of irony in her voice. There were actually no emotions at all.  
"Improvement's supposed to be slow," I shrugged. "Makes the progress sweeter."

She didn't answer me. Instead, she tilted her head back against the cushions and stared up at the ceiling.

"Any day soon, the ceiling will come crashing down on us," she half-sang in a strange, awry tune. "Then worms will feed on us and we'll be reborn as butterflies."

I smiled at her. "Butterflies, huh?"

"Butterflies. I've always wanted to soar."

I sighed deeply, and lay down with my head in her lap, almost like I'd been a little baby, seeking comfort in a warm, safe place. "Yeah," I whispered, as her hands stroked my head almost obliviously, "me too."

Somewhere behind me, I heard the door open. It creaked in an almost disappointed way. Someone was leaving the apartment, and I was the only one who was aware it was even happening. Reality conformed after my wishes, and for the first time in a long while, I was completely in control of my actions and choices.  
The door closed behind him, but the scent of gunpowder and after-shave lingered in the air.

Traces of something lost.  
Traces of something that might never have been.

-

_"I didn't lose my mind.  
It was mine to give away."_


End file.
